There was a lot of Halo news revealed at Microsoft’s Conference at Gamescom today, so let’s have a little breakdown of the main three things discussed: Halo 5: Guardians’ Beta, The Halo Channel for Xbox One and the announcement of Sanctuary for Halo 2 Anniversary.
With the First Look at the Halo 5 Beta, we get a little bit of insight from 343 of why the Beta is almost a full year before the release of Halo 5 Guardians. The beta will focus on 4 vs 4 Competitive gameplay, which should bring back memories of Halo 2 back in it’s heyday, and they’re doing this to bring back those feelings for the pros and fans alike. They’ve also announced that there will be 7 maps, 3 game types, 11 weapons and 7 different armour sets. There was also a little glimpse at these weapons and maps, and the game looks pretty amazing. There seems to be a little bit of a glimpse of Midship being in Halo 5 as well, which is great news. It’s a lot to take in within a small frame of time, but it’s all exciting and culminates in the timing of the beta itself, which will be available from the 29th of December to the 18th of January. This gives you a little more time to sink your teeth into it compared to old Halo creator’s Destiny Beta a few weeks ago.
Next up we have 343’s announcement of the next Multiplayer Map from Halo 2 that is getting reworked as an Anniversary addition. This newest one is Sanctuary, and rather than having some screenshots or concept art, we actually have a full (albeit short) game to watch on it, played by some professional Halo players. The map itself looks fantastic, and the gameplay of Anniversary looks like it feels the same way as Halo 2 did back on the original Xbox. It’s also one of the fans favourite maps, originally contained within one of the first downloadable content packages for Halo 2 itself. This is probably the first glimpse of multiplayer on the Halo 2 Anniversary engine, and gives us a little bit of an idea what playing the Master Chief Collection could be like.
The final thing announced was the Halo Channel, which seems to be a new application for the Xbox One that seems to be a hub for all things Halo, ala Halo Waypoint for the new generation. It seems to function in a similar way, with video content, and stuff to read about Halo, as well as things to unlock here and there, though there’s no word on WHAT these unlocks could be. They have previously been in game unlocks for Halo Reach, or even just experience points. It’s an interesting idea, and it could be a good place to keep up to date with everything Halo, especially with the release of Halo Nightfall and the Master Chief Collection coming up. It’s not easy to say where exactly they’re going with this, but to me, it just seems like the next generation of Halo Waypoint, and with the Xbox One’s focus on Apps, it could see a lot more use from the Halo Community that aren’t hardcore into absorbing absolutely everything Halo related.
So that’s just a quick summary of what Microsoft have revealed for Halo in their Gamescom conference. There’s a lot in here, and most likely a lot more to come in the future.
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